Shannon
Shannon was eating breakfast in the cafeteria when she looked up to see her Elvish mother enter the room.
"Shannon!" she exclaimed.
Shannon looked up at her and gulped nervously.
"The bethrothal is off," she said coldly, not so gently placing a video tape down on the table in front of her. "I'm ashamed of you. You are no longer my daughter."
"Mamma -" Shannon began.
"Don't 'Mamma' me," said the elf. "You knew your obligations. You have disgraced us all, Shannon."
And she turned and left. Shannon chewed her lip, and looked down at the tape. It had all been so much harder than she expected. The look on her mother's face... she had never anticipated that.
Sergei
Sergei walked over slowly and slid into a seat at Shannon's table.
"So, that was your mother? Borzemoi, what a bl'ad'," he said. (Bitch)
"You want to talk about it, or talk about something else?"
Shannon
"You... you were bethrothed when you were big but then you met her the other week and she is a..." Shannon trailed off realising that she was talking in opposites again.
She closed her eyes briefly, and a tear dripped down her cheek. She took a breath and said the next words more slowly.
"He is a jerk of the worst kind - never gets caught by the important people. Unfortunately, the only way for me to get out of this was to disgrace myself."
She stared at the tape on the table.
Sergei
Sergei reached out and wiped her tear away with his thumb.
"Don't cry, kratkoya. If that is the way of it, perhaps it is better that they think that you are disgraced. I..."
He chewed his bottom lip for a moment, frustrated by the fact that English wasn't his first language.
"I do not think there is anything you could do that was truly shameful."
Shannon
Shannon sniffed.
"Get - thank you," she replied softly. "But what you - I didn't - did... But what I did... is rather go- bad. Worth not having to spend the rest of my life with that creature, but... I didn't really... you - I cannn't go back to my family again."
Sergei
"If they are willing to cast you out, then they did not deserve you in the first place," Sergei said softly.
He was suddenly reminded of a play they'd done in English class, back before he'd been taken.
Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor;
Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised!
Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon:
Be it lawful I take up what's cast away.
Gods, gods! 'tis strange that from their cold'st neglect
My love should kindle to inflamed respect.
Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance,
Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France:
Not all the dukes of waterish Burgundy
Can buy this unprized precious maid of me.
Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind:
Thou losest here, a better where to find.
OOC: King Lear, Shakespeare.
Shannon
Shannon chewed her lip and frowned as she endevoured to understand all the opposites.
"You are very... sweet. Thank you," Shannon replied.
Tentatively she picked up the tape.
"I'm going to burn this."
Sergei
"Here."
Sergei took it from her gently, and a nimbus of energy bathed his
hand and the tape. It melted.
"All done. Whatever was on here is destroyed."
Shannon
Shannon stared, then turned her head to face Sergei and smiled.
"Ge- thank you," she said.